The excitement levels are ramping up for Everquest Next, Massively has a less than scientific poll about how excited people are for this upcoming sandboxy MMO by Sony Online Entertainment (SoE). The game will be previewed for the first time at SOE Live at between 1-4 August. I’m rather interested in seeing how this game pans out, I missed out on the sandbox everyone always raves about, the now defunct Star Wars Galaxies. Likewise I never played Ultima Online in its heydey. So here’s the chance for me to try the full on sandbox MMO experience at launch, right?

I have quite a lot of respect for SoE’s games, both EQ2 and Vanguard are great fun in their own ways. I also like the SoE take on free to play for the most part as well. But, and it’s a dozy of a but, there’s the ever-hovering dark cloud of the Pro Sieben Sat deal for European players. In the end the forum rage over this deal was answered by a reprieve so that existing players were exempted from this attempted sell-off of a whole region’s playerbase. The small print on this reprieve was that certain games will be served through PSS for all Europeans (I don’t follow either but I think Planetside 2 and DCUO were two).

So will EQ Next be on this list of games I can only play if I setup a PSS account? Fully acknowledging I’ve said this before but I am sticking by this ‘line in the sand’. If I can only play EQ Next through PSS then I won’t touch it. So unlike most of Massively’s readers my excitement for this game is tinged rather by concern over the lingering uncertainty of accounts and PSS.

5 Responses to EQ Next: excited? there’s a bit of a catch…

They have changed the rules on this SO many times you can only be certain by checking the exact current wording. As far as I understand it, however, all Europeans who have SOE accounts that pre-date the PSS deal can use those accounts for all SOE games, including new ones.

At one stage it definitely was the case that even existing SOE account-holders based in PSS1 territories would have to make PSS1 accounts for EQNext but I don’t think that is now the case. I can certainly play PS2 from the UK on my UK-billed SOE All Access account and PS2 launched as a PSS1 game in Europe.

I’m not sure whether PSS1 territory residents are able to make new SOE accounts though. I haven’t tried (I already have over half a dozen SOE accounts) but I doubt it. In the end, though, if I had to play EQNext via PSS1 I would. I already had a PSS1 account before they had any connection with SOE anyway, although I’ve hardly ever used it.

I’ll wait and see both how the reviews come out and what happens over the PSS situation. I’d certainly like to finally give a proper sandbox MMO a try, but I’d like to keep the benefits of the single account for multiple games, not least the pool of Station Cash I have banked there.

It was said that all those European players who created SOE accounts before Planetside 2 launched (20.11.2012), can use them to log to SOE games. Rest of players from Europe must create P7S1 accounts in order to play PlatnetSide 2. However everyone is able to create SOE account through their website: soe.com or recruit-a-friend links.
Unfortunately DCUO is IP locked and European players can’t use SOE accounts there. I hope they won’t do such mistake with EQNext.

I suppose if enough of us make a big stink about this then even EQ Next may be playable via SOE accounts, although DCUO wasn’t spared – not sure what to make of that compared to what happened with EQ2…